In this brutally honest collection of often cringe-inducing episodes, David Yoo perfectly captures the choke artist’s cycle of failure and fear from childhood through adulthood. Whether he’s wearing four layers of clothing to artificially beef up his slim frame,...

Detention: The best worst thing to happen to Peter Lee?
Peter and his best friend, Drew, used to be so cool (or, at least, not total outcasts) in elementary school. But now they’re in middle school, where their extensive mica collection and prowess at kickball have...

If Albert Kim has learned one thing in his tragic adolescence, it’s that God (probably a sadistic teenaged alien) does not want him to succeed at Bern High. By the end of sophomore year, Al is so tired of humiliation that he’s chosen to just forget girls and high...

On his graduation day from Renfield High, Nick Park is determined to figure out if his heritage is the cause of his abysmal luck with girls.
Beginning the novel as an unreliable and unknowingly comic narrator, Nick Park struggles to fit into Renfield–an alarmingly...

"The Choke Artist is brilliantly sneaky. David Yoo is so funny that sometimes you forget he’s writing about his (and America’s) deepest, most basic fears...his humor leavening yet never concealing the pain of not having enough faith in oneself."

- Stewart O'Nan (author of The Odds and Emily, Alone)

Bio

David Yoo’s first collection of essays, The Choke Artist: Confessions of a Chronic Underachiever (Grand Central) was published June 19, 2012.

He is the author of the YA novels Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before (Hyperion), a Chicago Best of the Best selection, and Girls For Breakfast (Delacorte), an NYPL Books For the Teen Age selection and a Reading Rants Top Ten Books for Teens choice, along with a middle grade novel, The Detention Club (Balzer + Bray), published in 2011.